Online Newsletter

Excerpted from our print newsletter. See the printed newsletter for detailed
Field Trip directions and reports, for phone and addresses for yard visits and
additional articles. Join now to obtain
the benefits of full membership!

Forensic Botany is the analysis of plant material in both civil and
criminal law enforcement. Plant evidence can be used to destroy
an alibi, help determine time since death, put a suspect at a crime scene,
or tell where someone or something has been. Dr. Hall will give
examples of cases which demonstrate how plants can be valuable tools
used to help put suspects behind bars.

Dr. Hall owns and operates an environmental and forensic consulting
firm in Gainesville and is a recognized expert in forensics and plant
identification. He was Director of the Plant Identification and
Information Services at the University of Florida and helped write wetland
jurisdictional rules for Florida and Federal wetland plant list and procedures He
has provided botanical expertise for investigations and training by the
FBI, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Florida Water Management
Districts and Department of Environmental Protection and others.

Early arrivals can snack before the meeting (7:15). Additions
to the refreshment table and raffle plant donations are always welcome. (Please
check your plants for lobate lac scale.) If you signed up to bring
refreshments and have questions, please call Patty Harris at 305-262-3763.

UPCOMING FIELD TRIPS (DADE)

Field trips are for the study of plants and enjoyment of nature by
FNPS members (Dade and Keys) and their invited guests. Children are welcome.
Details are contained in the printed newsletter mailed each month to members.
Collecting is not permitted. Please join today so that you can enjoy all the benefits of membership!

Sunday, October 23: RookeryBay National
Estuarine Research Reserve (South of Naples). This
9200-acre reserve has numerous interesting habitats and has been closed
to visitors since Briggs Nature Center closed. Thanks to our
leader Steve Woodmansee, we have permission to enter this protected
area. We will take a boardwalk through pine flatwoods, salt marsh
and tidal swamp to a view of Henderson Creek. Then we will take
a path through shelly coastal berm, mangrove habitat (to Rookery Bay)
and scrubby flatwoods, as time allows. Details in the printed
newsletter mailed to all members. Join
now to participate.

Sunday, November 13: Rabenau Camp. This area of the northeastern
Big Cypress was once owned by the late Bill Rabenau of Davie and is now
part of Big Cypress National Preserve. Ecosystems include glades,
open cypress forests, and deep pond apple sloughs, as well as oak/cabbage
palm hammocks and pinelands on higher ground. Bromeliads, ferns and orchids
abound. Details in the printed newsletter mailed to all members.
Join now to participate.

Plant lists: You can print plant lists before field trips for most
South Florida sites by conservation area. See The Institute for Regional
Conservation, http://www.regionalconservation.org.
Register to get a password.

Are field trips just for botanists? Definitely not! If you want
to learn the plants, please let it be known – we’ll identify good people
to stick close to. Many find that learning one or two plants per trip is
enough, and some of us like to go mostly to experience the place and enjoy
nature.

ACTIVITIES IN THE KEYS

Keys activities resume in November. To receive email reminders,
send your request to douville@bellsouth.net. Keys members – please
send announcements of other activities or Keys news to Tillandsia! Details
on the following events will be in the next Tillandsia.

November 16 meeting (Key WestBotanical Garden): George
Gann of The Institute for Regional Conservation will speak on Natives for
Your Neighborhood, an innovative Web application that promotes the use
of native plants within their historical ranges in order to increase success
of native plant projects and maximize conservation benefits.

November 19 field trip: Little Hamaca and Indigenous Parks
in Keys West, led by Tina Henize.

CHAPTER NEWS

Saturday, October 15, 9 a.m. - noon. EvergladesNational
Park Workday. Drinks, hand tools, gloves are provided,
but you might want to bring your own as well as a water bottle and snacks
to share. New volunteers, family, friends and kids are welcome
and encouraged! Enjoy good company and free admission to
the park for your car. It's time for fall wildflowers and wildlife,
so bring your lunch and head to Long Pine Key or the Anhinga Trail. Call
Patty, 305-255-6404, for more information.

November 19-20: Volunteers / plant donations are needed for The Ramble at
Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, DCFNPS educational display and plant
sale. If you can volunteer or have plants to donate for the sale
or plants to loan for the display, please call Jan Kolb at 305-378-6104
by October 20.

Wildflowers, passionflower vines and other herbaceous plants in 4" to
1 gallon pots are especially desirable. Shrubs and trees that are
well-established in their pots are also welcome. The nurseries participating
with us are the backbone of the sale, but the plants that members donate
are special treats.

Volunteers at the sale need enough knowledge of using natives in landscapes
to help at the sale, but members with any level of knowledge are encouraged
to volunteer for the display – learn on the job! We also
need help setting up on Friday afternoon.

Save the date! Holiday Party – Potluck Family
Picnic, Sunday, December 4, 2-5 p.m. A.D. Barnes Park (72 Ave and
Bird Rd.). FNPS, North American Butterfly Association, TREEmendous
Miami, and Tropical Audubon Society join together to celebrate all our
December holidays and the end of hurricane season. Details in the
November Tillandsia..

The Dade Chapter's Web site is now http://dade.fnpschapters.org. The
old URL still works, but you might want to change it in your bookmarks.

Rockdale Pineland field trip report. Due to limited space,
the report for the June 26 trip to Rockdale Pineland was not included in Tillandsia. Please
email or call Patty (305-255-6404, pphares@mindspring.com) for a hard copy
or Word document.]

YARD VISITS FOR NEW LEARNERS

This yard visit has some special features to offer. It is located in
North Dade (Miami Shores) for a change, is a follow-up to Gwen's September
program "Introduction to Plant Families" and is, of course,
a visit to her special yard. Gwen will tell us about the basic
landscaping principles that were used to place the plants and also how
to identify some of the plant families represented in her yard. (Bring
your handout from the meeting and a hand lens if you have one.)

The yard is small but loaded with native plants. When she started out
15 years ago, the property had one native plant and the many ubiquitous
exotics. The yard is now landscaped with 80% natives (about 100
species) and 10 % exotics. The natives are hammock and hammock
edge plants and dry pineland species, including wild flowers and grasses.
The soil is sandy and too well drained to maintain wetland plants without
watering.Specific d etails in printed newsletter.

Yard visits are offered every two or three months. They provide
opportunities to get to know the natives in a hands-on manner, to see
them in various settings, formal and informal, and to learn the property
owner's successes and failures at growing them.. Call Gwlady Scott at
305-238-8901 for more information.

Last chance to adopt free trees! Miami-Dade Department DERM's last
Adopt-a-Tree event of 2005 is at Florida Memorial College, Gate 1 (NW 44
Court and NW 158 St) on October 15, 9 am - noon. Trees available
will include at least one native species as well as avocado, lancepod,
lychee and sugar apple. Miami-Dade residential single-family and duplex
homeowners may pick up two FREE trees per property peryear.
Homeowners must bring proof of home ownership (e.g. property tax bill).
Renters must bring written permission and a copy of photo ID from the homeowner.
All participants must bring their own ID. To ensure the new trees
survive to adulthood, participants will be given a quick tutorial on how
to properly plant their trees. Tree experts will also be available for
questions and helpful tips. Call 305-372-6555 for recorded information
or log onto www.miamidade.gov/derm

TREEmendous
Miami, the people who plant trees, is looking for a part-time, bilingual
(Eng/Sp), independent person to conduct phone calls to elderly/disabled
homeowners who have signed up for DERM's Adopt-a-Tree Program.

Work from your
own home, $10/hr, hours are flexible with certain deadlines, record
keeping and phone logs on designated forms, 20-30 hours/month. Telephone
personality a must; tree expertise not required. If interested, contact
Amy Creekmur, Program Coordinator, 305-278-1863 or treemendousmiami@mail.com.

NATIVES FOR YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD

Natives for Your Neighborhood is officially launched. This
Web site was partially funded by the Florida Native Plant Society and
promotes its values. There are lists of cultivated native plants
for the entire region of the ten South Florida counties, countywide
plant lists, as well as lists of plants for each zip code, and their
habitats. Plant descriptions including size, drought and saltwater
tolerances, growth rate, flower and fruit color, butterfly info and
much more is provided along with many photos for each plant. See www.regionalconservation.org and
click on Natives for Your Neighborhood. The staff at The Institute
for Regional Conservation wish to thank all the members of the Florida
Native Plant Society for their help on this project. Please let
us know your comments.

OCTOBER IN SOUTH FLORIDA

by Roger
Hammer

[Reprinted from the October 1998 Tillandsia.]

Fall migration will be in full swing. Lots of warblers
can be seen in the canopy of wild tamarind, Lysiloma latisiliquum;
ruby-throated hummingbirds and the much rarer rufous hummingbird arrive
for their fall-winter-spring stay in South Florida; painted buntings
also arrive for the season and can be seen around bird feeders, grassy
areas, and (in my yard) feeding on the scarlet sage, Salvia coccinea.

Although the geiger tree, Cordia sebestena, flowers periodically
throughout the year, October begins its prime flowering season. Butterflies
and hummingbirds visit the showy orange-red flowers. Richard
Wunderlin, in his recent publication Guide to the Vascular Plants
of Florida (University Press of Florida, 1998) lists the geiger
tree as an exotic species. I think most of us will have a hard
time accepting this opinion. Geiger trees occur along shoreline
habitats of both the Bahamas and Cuba, and favorable ocean currents
could very easily have transported fruit (which float in seawater)
to shorelines of South Florida long ago.

One of South Florida's prized native plants is bandana-of-the-everglades, Canna
flaccida. It flowers several times a year, especially
in April and October. The bright yellow, flaccid flowers are
very showy and are held on tall spikes above the leaves. A
great place to see large populations is in the roadside ditch along
the west side of SR 29 about halfway between Tamiami Trail and Alligator
Alley in Collier County. Sometimes the leaves are stripped
by the larvae of the Brazilian skipper, a common butterfly wherever
the native canna occurs, but also around plantings of exotic cannas
in urban areas.

October is the last rainy month, and the cooler weather will
cause most native trees and shrubs to flush with new growth. If
you fertilize, this is the last call for the year before the spring rainy
season. Fertilizing in winter will cause a flush of new growth
that can get damaged by frost. It's been a while since we had a
hard freeze, so keep your fingers crossed.

The Dade Chapter Florida Native Plant Society is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization
dedicated to the understanding and preservation of Florida's native flora
and natural areas, and promoting native plants in landscapes.

The chapter includes residents of Miami-Dade County and the Keys. Meetings
in Miami-Dade County are on the 4th Tuesday of most months at Fairchild
Tropical Botanic Garden and are free and open to the public. Once a year,
instead of the usual meeting, members and their guests are invited to an
evening garden tour and social at a member's home. Meetings in
the Keys are held on 3rd Wednesdays in November through April at varying locations
from Key Largo to Key West. The basic FNPS membership (state and chapter)
is $25 per year. Please contact DCFNPS or click on the membership link
at this site for a membership application.

Please send articles, announcements of local activities and news
of interest to the Dade Chapter PO Box or email to the editor (above) by
the 15th of each month to be considered for publication the following
month. Advertising rates from $12/month.